What I handed over was an alien fragment.
The day I found it, the System told me: My mother is 4.2 light-years away.
The overturned tea table in the Chen family ancestral hall, the black-wing insignia hidden in a secret compartment in a warehouse west of the city, a door sealed for twelve years, fifty-three meters underground.
The day my mother disappeared, she drew an unfinished circle on my windowpane.
The System said: That circle points 4.2 light-years away.
Four years later, the Iron Wall System was deployed across eighteen provinces, with zero casualties. I received a reply from four light-years away.
It contained only three words: Come find me.
It took me eight years to reach her.
But outside that window, someone else was watching me too.
